Public sticklers have annoyed me forever, and I’ve been meaning to write about that, but recently in a post titled “Editors, Would You Do Me This Tiny Favour?” Katy McDevitt at PublishEd Adelaide did a great job of it herself. McDevitt gets to the meat of it in point 3: “It gives people the ...

As much as "occupy" seemed to me to be a slam dunk, I'm warming to something that did not make your list: "1 percenter." I've started seeing the usual holiday story about what to get the super-rich for Christmas cast as "What to get the 1 percenter on your list." I think this one might have some staying power.

In 1999, the American Dialect Society’s word of the year was “Y2K.” In 2007 it was “subprime.” Now that we’re almost finished with the current year, it’s time to ask ourselves: Which word best communicates the spirit of ’11? I have my own suggestions both for an overall winner and for runners-up...

Photo by MrCTeach I’m so pleased that many of you have been submitting questions at my Questions and Suggestions page. But there are two little problems. (1) For contractual reasons, I’m not able to answer style and grammar questions. I urge you to send them instead to the Q&A at the Chicago ...

Great advice, and something I've learning with experience. I give a project estimate, but I let clients know I bill by the hour.
On two recent large projects for university clients I gave a range based on their limited information, and I was told, "OK, we'll take the lower amount." I guess I need to work on how I phrase my initial estimate. But because I started with a range, I had no trouble letting them know when the project was exceeding the minimum.

Have you ever been partway into a freelance editing job only to find that it’s going to take a lot longer than you (or the assigning editor) thought? Maybe the tables are full of math errors, or the writing requires a lot of time-consuming head scratching and minor rewriting. If you exceed the ...

Among English speakers, there seems to be an irresistible, universal urge to coin words through blending word parts—to create what Lewis Carroll called portmanteau words. (Chortle, frabjous, and galumph are a few of Carroll’s famous portmanteaus.) But popular as they are, portmanteaus fail much ...

Thank you for this. Too many editors are fond of finding synonyms that have fewer letters or are more "conversational." But in simplifying, they often compromise the subtlety of the message.
The reverse is true, of course. Writers love to find a fancy alternative that might not mean what they think it means.
Any word worth more than 10 points in Scrabble should set of a copy-editing alarm. But too often we underestimate the reader and cheapen the prose.

Not long ago, the online Q&A at the Chicago Manual of Style posted this exchange: Q. If an author uses a rare word like “prevaricators” when “liars” would be more clear, should an editor change it? The author’s audience is college graduates, not necessarily English or journalism majors. A. Dumb...

Kevin Bacon was in "Murder in the First" with Christian Slater, who was in Star Trek VI with your cousin. Still, you know Grammar Girl, and she and Bacon have both been on Oprah. Meanwhile, a former co-worker's aunt knows Madonna's grandmother. I seem to have lost my train of thought here. LLAP.

Here's one of those great little stories that couldn't possibly have happened in the pre-Internet age. I mentioned some time ago that Leonard Nimoy is my (distant) cousin—his father was first cousins with my grandmother (yes, the one and only Grandma Sophie). That makes us second cousins, once r...